MBA is one of the most sought-after courses by graduates who are looking for a change in their career or employees who are willing to rise the corporate ladder. But unfortunately, the downside of this course reports that only 35 percent of the MBA graduates land up in jobs. Now due to the outbreak of coronavirus, things have become even worse for the MBA graduates, as we see the inevitable job cuts amid the outbreak.
To boost confidence and brush up the skills of the MBA students to a better level, Dr. Rama Krishna Yelamanchili, Hyderabad Professor of Finance from ICFAI Business School, and also an alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad, has started his own YouTube channel RK varsity to support management students during tough times like these.
Started RK Varsity to help students
Hailing from a small village (Madhavanagar) in Nizamabad district, Telangana, Dr. Rama Krishna’s mother strongly believed that higher education will help to overcome poverty. He completed his Ph.D. from JNTU Hyderabad in three years. After completing his MBA, he has chosen teaching as a profession instead of stepping into the corporate rat race.
A few years ago, Dr. Rama Krishna received an invitation from the International Leadership Association to present his research work in Chicago. In his visit to the USA, he attended the world’s best universities and business schools like Harvard, Kellogg School of Management, Chicago Booth, Yale, Stern School of Business, MIT, and a few more. He interacted with many professors of these aforementioned universities.
While having conversations with several professors of various universities, he noticed that many of these professors are strong supporters of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). Although teaching regular courses in their universities/business schools have been, as usual, they are active in MOOC through their websites, blog posts, and YouTube channels.
And Dr. Rama Krishna also dreamed of having some kind of online presence just like other professors on MOOC. During 2017-19, Rama Krishna worked in Ethiopian Civil Service University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In his classes, he noticed that Ethiopian students find it difficult to understand his accent.
To overcome this problem, he then created short videos and shared those with the students after his class. This idea worked out and a lot of learning has happened. Plus, the students were pretty happy and thrilled too.
In 2019, he returned to India and joined ICFAI university as a professor of finance. Until the Covid-19 lockdown happened, everything went smoothly. In 2020, the professor has encountered the same problem which he faced in Ethiopia.
“At ICFAI university our MBA students are scattered across the country. During my online classes, many students encountered difficulties related to poor internet, regular power cuts, disturbances at home, etc. Then, I coined my idea of going online through YouTube with my students”, asserted Dr. Rama Krishna.
With students’ encouragement, the professor took extra time and pain to create video lectures and uploaded those on his YouTube channel. Initially, he named the channel “Learn Finance and Accounting”. But students found problems with the name and were not able to search it swiftly on YouTube. Hence suggested changing the name of the channel. “Then, I brainstormed with the students for different names and finally, they recommended RK varsity”, stated the professor.
Around 70,000 students from 30 countries benefited
Slowly with word-of-mouth publicity, RK Varsity reached students of other classes in the university and around the world as well. Today, nearly 4,70,000 students found RK varsity on YouTube and around 70,000 students from more than 30 countries benefited from it.
Students who watched videos on the RK varsity channel are from countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Philippines, Kuwait, Qatar, Vietnam, Kenya, Ethiopia, and many more.
Presently his YouTube channel, RK Varsity, provides courses on HR Data Analysis, Marketing Data Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Financial Time Series Analysis, Stock Valuation, Current Asset Management, Bond Valuation, Time Value of Money using Excel. Risk Return Analysis using Excel, Capital Budgeting Techniques using Excel.
All his video lectures range between 10 and 45 minutes. Students can watch these videos anytime, anywhere, and can also download them from YouTube. So far, the channel has 270 videos, covering major quantitative topics of B.Com, M.Com, BBA, MBA, and CA courses.
When asked what motivated him to come up with this initiative, he promptly replied, “I am always in search of the best pedagogy and how to reach students across the world. In this context, I can proudly say that I am influenced by four persons, two are from the academic world (Prof. Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business at New York University, and Prof. Pat Obi, Professor of Finance at Purdue University, USA.), one is from voluntary service (Salman Khan from Khan Academy), and the other is from the corporate world (Byju’s Raveendran).”
Both Theoretical & Practical
Working as a professor of finance and teaching students online along with making YouTube videos on the sideline isn’t an easy task for sure. But the bigger problem is with today’s education system. So, we asked how we can bring a change to the current curriculum.
Dr. Rama Krishna responded from an MBA students’ perspective – “To the best of my knowledge and experience, 90 percent of the students join MBA intending to get placement in reputed companies. On the other side, academic institutions have different objectives. Personally, what I feel is, business schools, and faculty members should be object-oriented, i.e., they should channel their teaching endeavors to make students job-ready”.
As many reports mention, hardly 50 percent of MBA graduates possess job skills. This gap is because institutions and academicians fail to understand industry requirements. For instance, in the placement process, when a company shares its annual report and asks students to perform financial statement analysis, they get puzzled. This happens because many students never saw a company’s annual report during their studies.
Collaborations & Future Plans
Dr. Rama Krishna’s focus is on content development. By June 2021, he plans to upload 500 video lectures. Few academicians, entrepreneurs, and start-ups are keen on his content and have shown interest to collaborate as well.
He further added, “I received requests to provide online tuitions, coaching for exam preparation, internship training, placement training, job skills training, career enhancement skills training, etc. I am open to collaborating with like-minded entrepreneurs and companies.”
As we know for the fact that in India, nearly one crore students undergo commerce and management education at different levels (from +2 to PG) in any given academic year. The majority of them are deprived of quality education, especially students who are from Tier-II, Tier-III cities, and rural areas.
In the next five years, he plans to reach at least 10 percent of the students with different learning models, like online tuitions, exam preparation, internships, placement training, job skills training, preparation for competitive exams, preparation for entrance exams, etc.
In short, starting from students at +2 to placement at every stage he wishes to offer a product or service. “I know this is a herculean task, but when I recollect Sal Khan or Byju’s Raveendran, I feel it can be achieved”, he concludes.